Give Us This Day

by Tom Avitabile

  “We got two rentals and neither match the serial number of the one they found in the crater at the quarry.”

  “That’s a little thin for the existence of number three, but I am feeling generous today so I’ll give it to you. What else?”

  “A charge for one-inch steel plate from Blackman Steel out on the Island, three plates five-by-eight foot.”

  “Okay, so we got one mangled steel plate back from the test explosion at the upstate quarry, so two more supports your three U-Haul theory.”

  “Here’s the best part. Boat rentals in the Cayman Islands; a payment to Ultra-Class Jets for ten-hour charter service to the Czech Republic; that has to be for the first leg of Prescott’s flight. And a US Air round-trip ticket LaGuardia to Wayne County Airport, or otherwise known as the gateway to Dearborn, Michigan, yesterday!”

  Brooke pumped her fist. “We got names yet?”

  “No, but we got enough to bring in Kitman,” George said.

  “And close him down,” Remo said.

  “But none of that stops the attack,” Bridge said.

  “George, call Barnes. Tell him I am requesting every computer tech we have on this—it’s a drop-everything priority. I want them to take over what Kronos and Remo dug up. I want names and what they ate for breakfast. Then I want to brief you on your next mission.”

  .G.

  When George got back to Brooke’s office, Detective Rolland Harris was there. “Hey, Rolland, when did you get in?”

  “Brooke called me in. I just got here. I was on my way to Blackman Steel when she called and said we already knew about it.”

  “Rolland, it took two of the most geekiest computer guys on the planet to dig that up, how did you . . . ?”

  “I detect . . . remember?”

  Brooke walked in at that second. “You can explain it in the car, Detective Harris. George, you are going to be lead on the takedown of Kitman. I got a seven-vehicle caravan downstairs, just like two weeks ago, only today you are in charge, the lead agent. Harris here is your local to give you NYC authority for anyone outside the federal writ; that document will meet you on Central Park South by the time you roll up to Kitman’s office.”

  “Thanks, Brooke, for your confidence in me.”

  “You’ve earned it, George.”

  Chapter 40

  Catching a Plane

  One of Kitman’s three Maybachs, the sapphire blue one, was parked in front of his Central Park South office building. The driver, Kadeem, Kitman’s personal bodyguard and an ex-Pakistani Intelligence Service agent, was licensed to carry a Sig Sauer P226 under his jacket but not the two AK-47s and two grenade launchers in the trunk of the half-a-million-dollar luxury tank with its bulletproof “protectee cage” that was the rear passenger area.

  Kitman exited from the building and walked lively to the car as the former ISIS operative held the door open. He got in without saying a word. Once inside, he pulled down the back of the front seat that opened to a laptop computer of sorts with the keyboard on the tray part and the screen set into the seat back. He glanced at his itinerary. He was wheels up at Teterboro in thirty-nine minutes, then nonstop on his personal Gulfstream G650 to United Arab Emirates. The reason was the Arab League Summit symposium, at which he was giving the opening speech as, amusingly enough, an American capitalist investor. But it was a perfectly timed event to get him out of the city and the country when Dequa’s men pulled off their attack tomorrow. At 3:00 p.m. today, the two hundred employees of Kitman Global Investments would, on a pre-programmed basis, start dumping and buying stock in the “put and call” play that would eventually net him and his “masters” one trillion dollars and fuel the caliphate for the next one hundred years.

  The Maybach had to wait for a Central Park horse and carriage to clip-clop by before the driver made an illegal U-turn to head west on Fifty-Ninth Street then onto the West Side Highway. As they passed Columbus Circle, seven Federal Chevy Yukons, lights flashing but no sirens, shot across Seventh Avenue and onto Fifty-Ninth Street, east bound.

  The seven vehicles pulled up and the Treasury, FBI, and SEC investigators they carried emerged. An NYPD police car, also on silent approach, pulled up and a sergeant got out and handed George the federal warrant, signature ink still wet. It gave him the right to shut everything down and collect evidence.

  George, Harris, and the cop were first through the door and immediately requested that the security guards step away from their phones and consoles. The NYPD sergeant was all they needed to see to comply. The cop then went to the head of security’s office to isolate him and his staff from any early warning. George wanted to make sure that the loss of data files was not suffered this time like when they’d hit Prescott Capital Management.

  The agents, aided by NYPD detectives who arrived minutes later, fanned out on all floors of the top ten that Kitman Global Investments occupied. George and Harris met Kitman’s private security man at the elevator to the top floor, his office.

  “We are here to arrest Kitman. Stand aside,” George said.

  The guard hit a big button on his desk and there was a loud click from the door. “May I see your identification please.”

  Harris flashed his gold shield and ID and George flashed his fed creds.

  The guard reached for the phone. “I’ll check with building security.”

  Harris slammed the phone back down and drew his Glock. “Enough bullshit. Open the fucking door or I’ll open your fucking head.”

  George reached into the man’s jacket and pulled his gun out and pocketed it. “Now press some more buttons and unseal that room.”

  The guard acceded to the request that came from the gun in his face. He punched seven digits into a keypad and the door clicked again. George rushed into the office, gun first, as Harris zip-tied the guard’s hand around the back of his chair.

  “He’s not here,” George said as he emerged from the office.

  “The guard was stalling to give him time to get away.”

  “Yeah, I got that, but to where?”

  He took out his phone as he walked to a picture on the credenza behind Kitman’s desk. He picked up a photo in a frame. “Kronos, George here. Take down this tail number for a private jet, N2562.”

  “You think he flew the coup?”

  “We can track him to home or wherever he’s lunching in the next twenty minutes, but if he’s jumping the country we don’t have a second to spare.” He put the phone closer. “Yes, go ahead . . . When was it filed? . . . Thanks, Kronos. Call me if you can find anything else.” He closed the phone. “Let’s go. That’s his plane and it filed a flight plan to the UAE out of Teterboro.” They ran out of the office as the detectives escorted the guard away and started gathering evidence.

  George tried his phone in the elevator but the signal was weak. As soon as they got to the lobby he hit redial. Harris was already on his phone calling for a DMV registration search for any car belonging to Kitman or any of his subsidiaries, which his contact could get from Kronos. As George was giving him Kronos’s number, George’s phone connected. “Brooke. We may have a flight risk with Kitman. Can you get that fancy chopper wet and wild at Westside Heliport? Teterboro. He may be jumping. Good.”

  They loaded into the lead SUV and told the driver, “Westside Heliport, lights and sirens all the way.”

  .G.

  After the doorman of the next building over confirmed that Mr. Kitman’s blue Maybach was parked there ten minutes earlier, the call went out as an all-points bulletin. The NYPD, Port Authority, Jersey State Police, and every municipality on route to Teterboro Airport was put on alert to set up roadblocks and intercept any blue Maybach.

  .G.

  The Port Authority Tunnel Lieutenant was getting coffee when the alert came in. He put the second half of his ham and cheese sandwich in his mouth and with his free hand tore the alert off
the old-style printer. He read it immediately and went to his dispatcher. “Bob, put this out. Have all units be on the lookout for this car. Then he walked to the office next door. It was the monitor room, filled with a wall of TVs that were fed from cameras inside, outside, and at all the tunnel approaches, including the surveillance at the two big ventilators that exchanged the poisonous carbon-monoxide-laden air with the relatively fresher New York City air.

  The officer on watch turned as he entered. “What’s up, Lou?”

  “Keep a sharp eye out for a blue Maybach. Go to Tact 1. Report if you see it.”

  “We got a tag?”

  “Not yet.”

  His next stop was the muster room. “Okay, everyone, let’s get down to the plaza. We are looking for a blue Maybach. No tags, but there ain’t gonna be too many of those.”

  “What are we dealing with, Lou. A&D?”

  “No, this ain’t an armed and dangerous alert. It’s a person of interest, detain till arrival.”

  “Crap, feds!”

  “Don’t matter. We got a job to do.”

  The eight cops quickly got up and checked their leather as they headed out the door.

  .G.

  Kitman’s driver squinted as the setting sun’s glare nearly blinded him when they emerged on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. The helix up ahead that corkscrewed up to Route 3 was clear. He’d make Teterboro in plenty of time.

  .G.

  The PA cops fanned out onto the toll plaza of the tunnel with their backs to the setting sun, looking eastbound for cars coming west through the tunnel.

  .G.

  The Maybach was in the middle of climbing the helix on the far side of the tunnel as Kitman reviewed some financial numbers on the screen of his built-in terminal and was taking a sip of coffee when the large luxury sedan suddenly swerved right, causing a little of the coffee to slosh over the edge of the cup. “What the . . . ?”

  “Sorry, sir. There was a blown-out truck tire in the road,” Kadeem said.

  Kitman grunted with mild annoyance and dabbed his hand with a fine cloth napkin from the center console’s amenities insert.

  .G.

  “You got an overturned tractor trailer on the approach ramp to one and nine and residual delays all the way up to the traffic circle . . . More Eye In The Sky traffic coming up on the eights. This is Tom Colletti, traffic, NewsChopper 880. Now here’s Susan Combs with the News 88 weather watch.” Tom switched off his on-air mic, and immediately hit his radio transmit button. “Newark Tower, this is N880, repeat message . . . over”

  “N880, be advised police are requesting additional eyes, New Jersey area, looking for a sapphire blue Maybach heading west. Possible destination Teterboro . . . over”

  “N880 to Newark Tower, copy that . . . over”

  Tom looked out over the landscape from fifteen hundred feet above the Meadowlands and angled his machine to the left to check out Route 3 and Route 46. He switched his gimbaled-mount high-definition TV camera out of standby mode and moved the joystick as he zoomed in on the cars below. With the gyro-stabilized mount and the 600 mm, pure optical glass lens, he could read a license plate from three thousand feet above. He had nine minutes before his next report.

  .G.

  Two Hackensack motorcycle cops got on to NJ 120 and took positions on both sides of the roadway, one on the median and one on the side. A mile ahead of them four NJ State trooper cruisers lined up, two on the right, two on the left. If the motorcycle cops reported the Maybach passing their location, the four state cars would execute a rolling roadblock, eventually slowing the fifty-five mph traffic to a standstill. Then they’d have the Maybach in a box. The cycle cops would approach from the rear while the state cars siphoned off all the traffic in between.

  .G.

  In his rearview mirror, Kitman’s driver’s eyes were momentarily diverted by the flashing lights of one of the two State Trooper cars that pulled off to the side of the road, but thought nothing more of it than they must have pulled over a speeder.

  .G.

  “Newark Tower to N880, Newark Tower to N880 come in . . . over.”

  Tom took his hand off the camera control joystick and hit his transmission switch.

  “N880 to Newark Tower . . . over”

  “N880 immediately execute a ‘descend and maintain’ to eight hundred feet. Incoming direct vector emergency aircraft to Teterboro, coming in hot to your left.”

  Tom hit the collective and dropped the Sikorsky copter like the first drop on a rollercoaster. He looked up and to his left and saw the big, white helicopter overtaking him with its turbo fan engines full out. As it passed overhead, he saw the large letters FBI on the side of the cabin. He pushed forward on the collective and took off after them.

  .G.

  In the speeding chopper, George looked over to the seat next to his and noticed Harris was a little green around the gills. “Don’t like flying?”

  “I hate helicopters . . . If God had wanted them to fly he would have given them wings.” He pointed up and added, “That motor stops and this thing has the aerodynamics of a wall safe. Give me a quiet cabin thirty thousand feet up with a good-looking, long-legged stewardess with a great rack getting me drinks.”

  .G.

  Andrea Crain, the FBI pilot sitting right in front of him, instinctively dropped the craft one hundred feet in an instant, making the NYPD Neanderthal in the back groan loudly . . . and bringing a small smirk of satisfaction to her face. She then turned halfway and announced. “One minute out.”

  For the first time, Harris realized the pilot sitting right in front of him was a female. He looked quizzically at the back of the chair as he pushed his stomach back down his throat.

  .G.

  The Maybach pulled off Washington Avenue and up to the Teterboro VIP area. Kadeem popped the trunk and got out. He was retrieving Kitman’s bag when a helicopter zoomed low overhead. He looked up and saw the FBI letters on the side as it touched down about twenty-five yards from him. He went to the side rear window. Kitman opened it.

  “What do you want to do?” Kadeem asked.

  “Let’s go get coffee and come back later.”

  He went around to the back of the limo to put the bag back when two men emerged from the copter coming right to him. A noise from behind him turned him around as five cop cars entered the airport. He looked back down at the trunk. The AK-47 machine guns were locked and loaded. The bullet resistant back of the car would give him enough cover. He was reaching for the grenade launcher when Kitman appeared.

  He took the AK-47 and said, “The struggle goes on. We have done our part. They cannot stop what God has helped us . . .”

  He was interrupted by George’s voice. “Federal Agents. Step away from the vehicle, now.”

  He looked in his bodyguard’s eyes. “Our grandchildren will revere our names.” Then he hitched his head towards the police cars as Kitman swung to the side of the trunk lid and took a bead on the two agents approaching . . .

  Kadeem grabbed the other AK and turned and sprayed the black-and-white units that had just arrived.

  “GUN,” George yelled, as he and Harris immediately split up and hit the deck and rolled. The bullets whizzing over their heads slammed into the body of the copter. They had their guns out and were returning fire.

  Andrea immediately felt the searing pain in her thigh as the hot lead, slowed by the acrylic lower side window of the helicopter’s cockpit, burrowed into her femur.

  .G.

  At five hundred feet, Tom aimed the HD camera of NewsChopper 880 at the gun battle that came startlingly fast. He watched as cops scurried out from three of five cop cars firing their weapons. Two other police cruisers had no movement as they were pretty shot up in the first seconds of this firefight. “Master control, I got a gun battle at Teterboro. Feed is up. Start recording. Re
peat, unfolding gun battle . . . Get me live!” Tom narrated what he was seeing, hoping they were getting all this. “Tom Colletti, NewsChopper 880 coming to you live over Teterboro airport where a fierce gun battle suddenly erupted . . .”

  He continued reporting while he watched as two cops grabbed shotguns and blasted away at a man behind an open trunk lid. In a plume of pink, the machine gun shooter spun around and collapsed in the trunk.

  The other man was still shooting at the helicopter and the two feds, now prone on the ground, returned fire. He saw the shooter’s shoulder recoil. He registered that as a hit. But the man kept firing with the other hand.

  One of the cops with a shotgun charged at the man, whose back was to him. His first shot on the run missed. The man turned and hit the cop dead center and he went down, but the move uncovered him and one of the shooters on the ground hit him twice. The man also fell halfway into the open trunk.

  .G.

  The cops ran to the car as George and Harris ran to the copter to check on the pilot. Kitman was bleeding badly as he reached into the trunk with his blood-soaked hands. With his remaining strength, he pulled a pin on a grenade.

  As they opened the door of the cabin to help Andrea, from over by the car they heard, “Oh Shit! Move! Move! Move!”

  .G.

  The blast wave from the explosion hit Tom’s copter in an instant and caused it to wobble. He had enough pilot skills to regain control even at two hundred eighty feet above death. The Gyrocam mounted under his front skid stayed on target as the smoke cleared and revealed the mangled back of the limo and body parts spread out in a spray from the rear. Two cops a little further out were staggering. One was on the ground writhing in pain. “It . . . It . . . there was an explosion! The car exploded! Right here, as police approached, it just . . . just exploded. I see many casualties and, be warned control room, it is a gruesome picture. Once again, reporting live over a violent . . .”

  .G.

  Both George and Harris were deafened by the ringing in their ears. The trunk lid had blocked the force of the detonation from reaching them and the FBI copter, but not the ear-piercing percussive wallop. The prop wash from a hovering news helicopter blew away the smoke of the explosion and Harris saw the carnage. “Stay with her, I’ll go . . .”